일본 노동시장과 고용관행의 변화 -헤이세이(平成)불황부터 최근까지의 동향-

Abstract

The Japanese economy and labor market have been greatly changed through recession for a long period and the recovery period started from collapse of bubble economy in 1990’s, global financial crisis in 2008 and earthquake in East Japan in 2011. The labor market started to be flexible by increase of a unemployment rate that had been kept in a stable level for a long time and a turning-in rate and turnover rate and diversification of types of employment including part-time job, dispatched labor, contract labor and non-regular labor has been clear by sharp increase of non-regular employment. As a result of flexibility of the labor market and diversification of employment, the society with gaps and working poor appeared as a social issue. Conversely, Japanese employment practice has been revised extensively with lifetime employment and seniority wages as key point by seeking for plans to reduce personnel expenses and expanding efficient use of labor in changing social and economic environment such as low growth caused by long-term recession, change of industrial and employment structures, aging of labor and information society. Regarding lifetime employment, quite many arguers have mentioned about termination of lifetime employment by decreasing a rate of lifetime employees and average years of service due to aftereffects of long-term recession caused by collapse of bubble economy. Also, regarding the seniority wages, transfer to role-centered personnel management system through control of promotion with long service and regular promotion by reducing functional qualification class and abolishing age-based pay and introduction of job-based pay and role-based pay, introduction of performance and performance-centered system and transfer from personnel management with a single line to personnel management with multiple lines are the representative examples. This transformation of Japanese employment practice means that collective labor relations that have strong traditional standardized and uniform characteristics have been transformed to individual labor relations that wages and promotion are changed according to performances and achievement of individual employees. However, a new trend of Japanese employment practice has appeared since the middle and late of 2010’s. Movements to increase new employment and reevaluate lifetime employment practice are active from stable employment and personnel training aspects. Accordingly, a personnel training policy that emphasizes labor-driven self-development has been changed to internal labor market-centered corporate’s leading and an achievement and performance-centered wage system introduced in the past have been changed to function-based pay, job-based pay, role-based pay, position-based pay or duty-based pay. In this study, by reviewing flows of flexibility of the labor market and diversification after recession in Heisei period from human resources management aspect and understanding trends of flexibility of the current labor market and flexibility and diversification of employment, its features will be reviewed.